The Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and Community Education has launched a program to support young climate leaders in Kiribati and Tuvalu to communicate and advocate for their Pacific home in Australia, the region and beyond.
By Debra Vermeer
The Supporting Climate Resilient Leadership in Kiribati and Tuvalu Program was launched on 16 October in Balmain, Sydney, with six Climate Fellows from those two Pacific countries welcomed to the program.
The Director of the Edmund Rice Centre (ERC), Alopi Latukefu, said the program was funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and is part of ERC’s Pacific Calling Partnership.
“The Fellowship Program is really about giving the opportunity for these young leaders to have an immersive experience where they not only hone their skills and capability in advocacy but also their understanding of the way in which the systems in Australia work,” he said.
“These young leaders have the opportunity to engage with decision-makers during their time here, with networks of influence, as well as building their networks across different organisations in Australia that can support them when they return home, to be able to pick up the phone when an issue arises, either in country or in international negotiations, and to know they’ve got support.”
Alopi said part of the training was to help give the Fellows an understanding of how communication and advocacy works for different audiences.
“Some audiences are there to hear their personal story, to be engaged and to be brought along on the journey, which is really very emotional in terms of the impact of climate change on their home and their community,” he said.
“Other audiences might not necessarily be coming to the table with an open mind, including decision-makers, and communicating to them is a different style of communication, particularly in government where ministers are very busy people, and you just have a 20-minute meeting where you have to communicate everything to them in probably the first 30 seconds.
“It’s about getting that discipline and being able to see how that operates in Australia. And this will hold them in good stead, not just in terms of their engagement in places like Australia, but broadly in the region and internationally.”
The six-week fellowship includes time spent in the political corridors of Canberra as well as in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, seeing first-hand the impact on communities transitioning away from dependence on fossil fuel industries.
“They’ll be going up to the Hunter and having conversations with impacted communities in that area so they can see the transition from the other side of the equation and gain an understanding of why it’s so difficult for Australia to make that transition. That understanding will help them in their own advocacy for their own communities,” Alopi said.
The launch of the program also included a presentation from Dr Wesley Morgan, a research associate with the Institute for Climate Risk and Response at the University of New South Wales, who has written widely on climate change and international relations in the Pacific islands.
Dr Morgan has more than a decade of experience living and working in the Pacific islands, where he worked as Pacific Policy Advisor with Oxfam, and taught postgraduate courses in diplomacy at the University of the South Pacific. Dr Morgan is also a fellow at the Climate Council and a research fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute (Griffith University).
The Sisters of the Good Samaritan have long been supporters of the ERC’s Pacific Calling Partnership, in line with their commitment to ecological conversion and the presence of Good Samaritan Sisters in Kiribati. Three Sisters attended the Sydney launch of the Fellowship Program: Sisters Elizabeth Brennan, Veronica McCluskie and Agnes Farrugia, while others watched online.
Elizabeth said she was very impressed by the young participants in the program, and their personal testimonies of the impacts of climate change on their daily lives.
“We met six fine young people who are committed to making life better for the peoples of Kiribati and Tuvalu,” she said.
“In their address to the group they exhibited leadership and expertise in different areas such as climate action, trade relations, improving access to water and raising awareness of shared responsibility for our planet.
“There was an earnestness and drive in these young people who want to take the learnings from this program back to their peoples and the peoples of the Pacific.”
Elizabeth said Dr Morgan gave high praise to the Pacific peoples, who have taken on responsibility and leadership over many years in raising awareness about climate action at the level of the United Nations.
“In particular, he encouraged Australians and New Zealanders to be more proactive in working with our Pacific neighbours in the area of climate policy,” she said.
Veronica McCluskie, who spent some years living and working in Kiribati, said she was impressed by the Fellowship Program and its aims.
“These young people were quite inspiring,” she said. “They introduced themselves and said what they were hoping to gain from the program, and their stories were absolutely amazing.
“I was very touched by a young woman from Kiribati who said she couldn’t get over being here in Australia, staying in accommodation where she could turn on a tap and get hot and cold running water.
“At home she couldn’t just turn on a tap and get drinkable water because of the effects of climate change on the water supply.
“I don’t think we westerners have any idea of what it’s like to be facing the prospect of losing your homeland. And once you lose your homeland it is very easy to lose your culture as well. But these small nations, which have a specific culture, could thrive if we could be more open and more supportive.
“I think this program, which gives these young people an experience of leadership and government, seems to be a really good initiative and I’m sure it will have a big impact.”
ERC Director Alopi Latukefu moderated an important event in Baku this month as part of COP 29 where Indigenous peoples from the Amazon, the Pacific, and Australia discussed the idea of an Indigena Troika process in the lead-up to COP 30 and COP 31.
This article was published in the November 2024 edition of The Good Oil.
